Lee & Pearl went to Israel — Part Two

Pearl here, again! Please enjoy this second installment of the travelogue for our recent trip to Israel. And stay tuned for the third and final installment, coming soon.

If you haven't read Part One yet, CLICK HERE to catch up on Lee & Pearl's adventures in Israel.

The Old City of Jerusalem

By our second week in Israel, we were confident bus and train commuters. So on a cool and pleasant Sunday morning we hopped on the "fast train" east from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to visit our favorite spot from our 2005 trip — the Old City of Jerusalem.

Surrounded by 16th century walls and gates built by Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the Old City is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and an absolute must-see.

The Old City is divided into four traditional quarters — Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian — and contains an extraordinary concentration of not just historic, but deeply holy sites such as the Temple Mount and Western Wall for Judaism, the Via Dolorosa, Stations of the Cross and Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for Islam.

We entered the Old City through Damascus Gate (above) and were immediately plunged into the suk (market) that runs almost the entire length of the old road between the Christian and Muslim quarters in the north, and the Armenian and Jewish quarters in the south.

You can get almost anything here, from t-shirts and inexpensive pottery to genuine antiques and archeological artifacts.

We spent most of our time shopping at and chatting with the proprietors of two wonderful shops full of antiquities and craft items across the street from each other on David Street, Bassam Barakat and Sinjlawi. Both shops are absolutely amazing, and the stories the owners shared with us added so much to our shopping experience. Bassam Barakat has been in the same family since the 1930s — and Sinjlawi for 300 years, with a 2000-year old Roman era well tucked against one wall in the store!

Like many of us, the shop owners and their families spent the pandemic stuck in their workrooms, collecting and crafting away in the hope that some day their shops would reopen for business. So along with amazing antiquities, the shops also featured craft items like the antique lapis lazuli and carved beads and coin pendants that Lee bought, and modern hand-made jewelry like the Roman glass pendant and opal choker that Pearl bought.

Near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the suk road crosses and briefly becomes the Via Dolorosa, marked by the Stations of the Cross, leading to that wonderful combination of the breathtakingly sacred and totally ordinary that characterizes so much of Jerusalem: Ninth Station Juices, anyone?

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is another must-visit, even if you aren't a member of any of the Christian denominations that take part in the complicated custodial agreement — the "Status Quo" — that has managed to keep the peace (mostly) on the site for so many for centuries.

As Jews, we can only imagine what a visit to this Church must be like for those who are not just appreciating its history, but are making a sincere pilgrimage of faith.

Our next stop was a site of great importance to us as Jews — the Tower of David Citadel and Museum — which stands imposingly next to the Jaffa Gate, straddling the line between the Christian and Armenian quarters.

This collection of defensive structures largely dates to the Jewish Herodian, Roman and Ottoman Muslim eras, but the archeological excavations that dot the interior courtyard reveal even earlier structures dating back to the classical Hasmonean Jewish kingdom that ruled Judea from 140 BC to 37 BC.

Though the museum exhibits were under renovation during our visit, the courtyard, the exterior structures, the city models showing development through each era, and the 360° view from the Phasael Tower were well worth the visit.

From the Tower of David, we continued south through the Armenian Quarter, which dates all the way back to a 4th century settlement of Armenian Christian monks.

Many tourists head to this quarter to shop for exquisitely detailed, brightly colored pottery — which we recommend — but this area is also the site of our favorite surprise encounters.

Back in 2005, a lone nun offered us a private tour of the excavated room at the Syrian Orthodox Church of Saint Mark where her sect believes the Last Supper took place. Afterwards, she sang the Lord's Prayer in a clear, sweet voice — and in the same Aramaic dialect that Jesus would have spoken.

On this visit, a black-clad monk waved us behind a carpet-covered door into the breathtaking interior of the 12th century Cathedral and Monastery of Saint James.

The interior was lit entirely by candles and oil lamps suspended from the walls and ceiling in a complicated array of ropes and pulleys. We arrived at the end of the day, and witnessed the monks lowering the lamps and blowing them out, one by one.

It was breathtaking.

If a monk or nun in the Armenian quarter waves you behind a hidden door with a smile of secret joy on their face — follow them!

For the last part of our visit, we turned into the Jewish Quarter. From its proximity to the Western Wall and the ancient Temple Mount, one might expect this quarter to be older than the Armenian and Christian quarters, but unfortunately the Jewish Quarter was entirely destroyed during the 1948 War of Independence.

The quarter has since been rebuilt, and during that effort excavation projects revealed sites like this 6th century section of the Roman Cardo, the main market street of Byzantine Jerusalem, which runs right next to (and under) the current market street.

As the day ended, we finally approached the Western Wall — the most sacred site for the Jewish people.

As one of the four supporting walls of the Temple Mount — and the last part to remain intact and accessible after the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple by the Romans in 70 AD — the Western Wall serves as a focus for Jewish inspiration, yearning and prayer, and has done so for centuries.

We joined the quiet crowds at the wall and offered up our own prayers.

Then we headed back through the darkening streets to Damascus Gate, hopped on a return shuttle to the train station and made our way back to Tel Aviv.

We can't wait to come back to the Old City on another visit to see what's down all those alleys and around all those unexplored corners...

Up the coast to Caesarea and Haifa

The next morning we got up early, rented a car that almost fit all five members of our party, and drove up the coast to see the Herodian, Roman and Crusader ruins at Caesarea National Park.

After spending the previous day in a functioning modern city that felt ancient, it was weird to come to a ruined ancient city that felt... frankly, modern.

Built by decree of King Herod the Great in the late first century BC (over 2000 years ago), the city of Caesarea Maritima sprang into existence where no city had existed before. One imagines the king visiting the tiny fishing village on this beautiful, otherwise empty beach and declaring to his aghast followers that he would like them to build his palace THERE — and while they're at it, surround the palace with a major port, mansions, markets, warehouses, theaters, a 30,000-seat hippodrome (think Ben Hur) and of course, an elegant bath house.

Here's the modern part: because Herod's Judea was a Roman client state and had all the Roman technologies available, the king could simply will such a city into existence. Aqueducts could be built to bring water to the arid beach. A harbor could be dredged and giant breakwaters constructed around it. Paved roads could be laid and mansions, bathhouses, theaters and all the rest — including the king's mosaic-tiled palace on the beach (now in ruins, below) — could simply be built.

One is reminded of Las Vegas.

There is a problem with a city that is willed into existence, though: it requires a constant expenditure of will to keep it there.

Though Caesarea remained a provincial capital after the Roman annexation of Judea, and was well populated into the 6th century Christian Byzantine era, it fell into rapid decline after the Muslim conquest in 640 AD.

The city was re-built and re-fortified as a strategic port as it changed hands during the Crusades, and in 1251, it witnessed a last gasp of royal will as Louis IX of France ordered the construction of medieval walls around the northern part of the city — many of which still stand.

But Louis' royal will proved too tenuous. In 1265, the Mamluk Sultan's armies scaled the medieval walls and laid waste to the city within.

With no external reason to exist, the city reverted to a quiet fishing community, and stayed that way for centuries. According to a 1922 census, Caesarea had a population of 346.

We left Caesarea an hour before sunset, and hurried up the coast in hopes of reaching the port city of Haifa and the world-famous Baháʼí Gardens before dark.

We got to the gardens almost exactly at "magic hour" — minutes before sunset.

The Baháʼí Gardens are another site we hope to come back to for further exploration some day. Along with being the functioning center of a modern religion, they are a spectacular array of formal gardens and elegant domed shrines terraced into the steep slopes of Mount Carmel, overlooking the Mediterranean.

In the low light, don't the gray leaves of the olive trees look like a smoky mist around the palm trees?

Though we were not able to do this site justice in the limited time we had available, even a brief visit to the gardens was exactly the tonic we needed after a long day.

We ended the day with dinner at a seafood restaurant in Haifa with a truly spectacular view — Kalamaris, one of a literal stack of restaurants hanging off Mount Carmel, across the street from the Stella Maris Monastery and a few steps from the mountaintop station for a terrifying set of dangling cable cars that were taking braver souls down to the beach.

We'll leave you with the restaurant's view of the port of Haifa, the third-largest city in Israel. (The food at Kalamaris was great, btw. Though with that view, they could have served us hot dogs.)

Please stay tuned for Lee & Pearl went to Israel — Part Three, as we return to Jerusalem and the Israel Museum — and wrap up our thoughts on the trip!

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